As enterprise networks increase in scale, they tend to include many devices (e.g., switches, arrays, hosts, and servers) from different vendors and associated with different technologies. In one particular example, storage area networks (SANs) often include storage appliances, switches, and block storage devices that originate from a number of different vendors. The scale, complexity, and diversity of many enterprise networks, render it increasingly difficult to manage configurations of network devices to ensure compliance with enterprise policies.
Current solutions for managing network device configurations are generally technology and/or vendor specific, and are inoperable or ineffective in diverse network environments with different technologies and network devices originating from different vendors. Other solutions utilize agents installed on network devices to obtain configuration data. However, many network devices (e.g., certain types of switches) do not support agents. Accordingly, current solutions for managing network device configurations do not have the ability to consolidate, filter, or analyze configuration data and are ineffective, inflexible, and/or inefficient, resulting in reduced configuration compliance and associated security vulnerabilities.